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Savoury Omelette

A lightly seasoned egg omelette with optional ham, chicken, or tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savoury Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Beat the egg yolk with pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, and celery salt.

  2. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg white.

Cook the omelette

  1. Heat an omelette pan and melt the butter.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  3. Cook over medium heat for about 3 minutes.

  4. Brown the top by holding the pan in front of the fire.

  5. Place the pan in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

  6. If desired, add minced ham, chicken, or tongue to the egg mixture before cooking.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg white whipped into foam gives lightness, while the yolk adds richness and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps keep the omelette from sticking to the pan.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal aroma and a bit of green color.

The step that matters

Place the pan in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set. Egg proteins set at moderate heat. Cooking past that point squeezes out moisture and makes the omelette rubbery, so watch for it to look just set.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, parsley, butter, ham):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, parsley, butter, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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